Free Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 by A Likely Story (v1.1) Page A

six innings, Carlton permitted only two singles while Seaver
allowed three singles and a walk; neither team ever threatened to score.
                I spent more and more time watching
the outer world beyond the outfield fence, where the big jets sailed slowly by,
descending like stately matrons toward LaGuardia Airport , and where the unending traffic of the Van Wyck Expressway hurried
along its busy antlike way, elevated above the scruffy neighborhoods. A tower
of the Whitestone Bridge could be seen against the pale blue sky, contrasting beautifully with
the rich green emptiness of the outfield. “What happens if they never score?” Joshua asked me. “Then the game never ends,” I told him.
                And through it all, I kept thinking
about The Christmas Book. Baseball starting, spring in the air, and my
mind is filled with Christmas. In the last week I’ve received several more
contributions, and I’m beginning to think the final shape of the book will be a
bit odder than I’d originally planned. I did return Diana Trilling’s “Christmas
In The Gulag,” saying we were trying to avoid politics— particularly global
politics—in The Christmas Book , but William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Floating
Celebration” I just cannot resist. It is a description of a Christmas Eve party
on a yacht in the Caribbean , involving himself and his wife Pat and
several of their middleweight celebrity friends, and failing a submission from
Louis XVI this one has absolutely got to get into the book. What makes it
wonderful is that, when Buckley describes the darkies singing carols for the
gentry on deck beneath the torrid tropic sun, be thinks the subject is
the tropic sun.
                Isaac Asimov sent me another
article, this one on the uses and meanings of gold, frankincense and myrrh in
the ancient world. I returned it with thanks; why does he keep sending me
things? I’ve already taken one.
                Roddy McDowall sent a nice letter,
apologizing for not having written sooner and suggesting a series of photos of
famous people opening Christmas presents with their children. He had already
accumulated several such over the years—Elizabeth Taylor, for instance—so he
sent a few contact prints to give me the idea; lovely luminous black- and-white
pictures, very heartwarming in the best possible way. We don’t expect such
expressions on famous faces; it could be that the human physiognomy never looks
sweeter or more blessed than when a present is given to a child. I wrote
McDowall how much I liked the idea, only suggesting en passant that he risked a
certain sameness overall, which I trusted his genius to be aware of and deal
with.
                Helmut Newton sent six photos of a
naked woman dressed in various leather belts seated this way and that way on a
department store Santa’s knee. I returned them with a note saying we’d
abandoned the project.
                I like what Tomi Ungerer
sent. I’m not sure I can use it, but I like it. In a series of drawings, Santa
Claus walks through the forest with his sack over his shoulder, enters a
cottage, takes toys and cakes and goodies from the sack as delighted children
gather around him—coming in from other cottages in the neighborhood,
presumably—and then Santa grabs up all the children and puts tbe ?n in the now- empty sack. He walks back through the
forest, sack over shoulder, and into his cave, where he removes the Santa suit
and white beard and is revealed to be an ogre. Okay!
                I have also had occasion to write
Andy Warhol.
     
                Dear Mr. Warhol:
     
                Thank you for the photos of the old
round Coca-Cola tray with the smiling Santa Claus face on it. and the Santa Claus hand holding a Coke glass. The outlines
you drew around everything in red and green are very thought-provoking, but
unfortunately we have already made arrangements with the